Sublime

we would expect the expertise practice area to be relatively unleveraged, with low fixed costs and high margins. The firm would make its profits through high billing rates or some form of value billing, justifiable and sustainable because of the criticality, complexity, and risk in the client engagement.

(margin, productivity, or leverage).

A full program to differentiate the firm through client service requires action on five fronts (in this order): 1. Measurements 2. Management 3. Tips and tools 4. Training 5. Rewards

The single most important talent in selling professional services is the ability to understand the purchasing process (not the sales process) from the clients’ perspective.

The most notable firms have their own house in order first, and only then do they branch out and focus on client work.

any strategy development process must be consultative, one in which individual partners can become convinced that the benefits to them personally of achieving the goals will be worth the personal “costs” of doing new things or different things.

underdelegation causes senior people to neglect high-value tasks that are of critical importance to the future success of the firm.

Brains projects usually involve highly skilled and highly paid professionals. Few procedures are routinizable: Each project is “one-off.” Accordingly, the opportunities for leveraging the top…

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professional services involve a high degree of customization in their work. Professional firms must manage customized activities where little, even management information, can be reliably made routine. Management principles and approaches from the industrial or mass-consumer sectors, based as they are on the standardization, supervision, and market